“Stand your ground,” politics and CForward

April 9, 2012

I recently came across a talk given by Tom Tresser, a Chicago-based organizer, educator and civic activist, who questions the nonprofit community’s reluctance to effectively engage in political action, citing the National Rifle Association’s influence in national and local policy-making and argues that there needs to be a similarly effective political instrument for the nonprofit community. Tresser notes the work underway by CForward, a nonpartisan, 501(c)4 organization that “champions the economic role of the nonprofit sector and supports candidates who include the sector in their plans to strengthen the economy.” I love what CForward is doing and it’s no surprise that the forward-thinking Robert Egger, founder and CEO of DC Kitchen, is behind it. Tresser really espouses the value of sustained political engagement and is pushing Chicago’s creative community to organize around its seemingly disparate political interests.

Both Tresser and Egger understand that even an imperfect political system weighted heavily toward deep-pocketed business interests can be used to advance their agendas. They’ve acknowledged political campaigning is imperative and efforts like CForward have taken a page from the Republican Party’s winning playbook and use it to optimize the political agenda of the nonprofit sector. Labor unions have come to a similar conclusion; while fully aware that the Citizens United ruling is far more beneficial to corporations, unions are exploiting the ruling to offset corporate money flowing into conservative groups like American Legislative Exchange Council.

More importantly, labor unions are changing how they engage in politics. As A.F.L.-C.I.O. president Richard Trumka told the New York Times,

The way we used to do politics is we’d set up a structure six months before the election, and after Election Day we’d dismantle it… Now we’re going to have a full-time campaign, and that campaign will be able to move, hopefully, from electoral politics to issue advocacy and accountability.

It’s good to see that the nonprofit sector might eventually move in a similar direction.

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Thanks for picking up this story. I am hopeful that America’s young nonprofit leaders will pick up the challenge and run for office as champions of a Human Agenda. We have too many incumbents pushing a Corporate Agenda for the 1%. I don’t hold out much hope that established nonprofit leaders will change their cowardly ways – they will continue to leave the heavy political lifting to the Far Right and the conservatives who would de-fund social services. If there is a nonprofit leader who is ready to run, contact me at tom@tresser.com. In the mean time I invite you and your readers to visit http://www.reasonstorun.us and post your own Reason To Run.